Monitoring of Regional Labour Markets in European States

Standardisation in Regional Labour Market Monitoring based on Experiences (S. 127-128)

Ronald W. McQuaid

1 Introduction

A strategic approach to policy delivery by public agencies and local service providers is important to develop and implement policies concerned with labour market issues, including access to employment by different groups and economic development. Hence, consistent, accurate and up-to-date labour market information and intelligence are required by public, private and third-sector bodies, and the partnerships between them. Standardisation of labour market monitoring can improve policy and may involve standardised definitions and processes such as how the information is collected, analysed, and distributed.

However, each organisation or partnership may have different aims, target groups, purposes for gathering or using the information and information requirements. This leads to a fundamental dilemma of how to monitor labour market information in a way that meets the diversity of needs of disparate users such as: individual regional or local organisations and projects, a variety of funders (from European to local level), and larger scale national or supra-national bodies. Each group often has its own requirements in terms of the time, space, content and purpose of the information required and different levels of resources and expertise.

Can the information requirements for effective labour market monitoring be standardised to meet the needs, abilities, and resources of such disparate gatherers and users of the information? In addition, how can information be developed into labour market intelligence whereby it provides the appropriate information that can be effectively utilised and analysed by its users? This chapter does not seek to review the moves towards consistent definitions and measurements of labour market statistics, such as the OECD’s Main Economic Indicators database that has evolved since they were first published in 1965, or the work of EUROSTAT and National Statistics Agencies.

These seek statistics that are: relevant, consistent over time, comparable between countries, timely, i.e. are available to users with minimal delay after the end of the reference period, readily accessible, and methodologically transparent (see for instance OECD, 1998, 2006). Similarly, the chapter does not consider methods of monitoring, as these are too large topics to be analysed within the space available. Rather, this chapter seeks to briefly outline some of the issues regarding standardisation of labour market monitoring for regional, and local bodies as they relate to a specific example – Scotland. The next section sets out some of the recent changes in the context of monitoring requirements. Section 3 presents a case study of regional and local requirements in Scotland, and Section 4 discusses some issues for labour market monitoring at the regional and local levels, and Section 5 presents brief conclusions.

2 Changing Labour Market Monitoring Requirements

In the case of Scotland in the United Kingdom, a number of circumstances have led to changing labour market information needs and provision. These are not unique as similar circumstances are present across much of the European Union. First, there is a huge range of public organisations monitoring, gathering, and analysing regional labour market information. In the United Kingdom the increased delegation of responsibilities and resources to regional governmental, non-governmental organisations ("Quangos") and other agencies has led to a large number of agencies gathering and monitoring such information, and arguably to a reduction in the standardisation of labour market monitoring.